Terrorism

Citizens Sue Over Suspicious Activity Program

July 12, 2014 Kevin Gosztola, www.dissenter.firedoglake.com Resist! ACLU, Law, Privacy, Surveillance, Terrorism

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit on behalf of five United States citizens challenging a domestic surveillance program, which involves the collection of “suspicious activity reports” on individuals. The federal government has a National Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative (NSI) that, according to the ACLU’s filed complaint [PDF], “encourages state and local law enforcement agencies as well as private actors to collect and report information that has a potential nexus to terrorism in the form of so-called ‘suspicious activity reports [SARs].’” Any individual who is flagged as having a “potential nexus to terrorism” will automatically be subject to “law enforcement scrutiny, which may include intrusive questioning by local or federal law enforcement agents.” Plus, “Even when the Federal Bureau of Investigation concludes that the person did not have any nexus to terrorism, a SAR can haunt that individual for decades, as SARs remain in federal databases for up to 30 years.”

Middle School Students Called “Terrorists”

July 9, 2014 Dan Johnson, www.mintpressnews.com Educate! Civil Disobedience, Education, Student Activism, Terrorism, Youth

A group of Georgia middle school students decided they had enough of the school dress code and would violate it together in an act of civil disobedience. The school, Cowan Road Middle, found out about the plan and suspended the students for…terrorism. What? According to WSB-TV (emphasis added): “To me it was just a bunch of 13-year-olds acting crazy,” said Christopher Cagle, the father of a suspended honor roll student. Cagle said the principal called the students’ actions terroristic threats. He said the principal was too swift and severe with the punishment.” Violating the school dress code is indeed a violation of school policy, but to elevate it to a level where one could be indefinitely detained, without charge or trial, is going way too far.

Victory For Dr. Sami Al-Arian: Feds Drop All Charges!

July 1, 2014 USPCN, www.uspcn.org Educate! Israel, Law, Palestine, Terrorism

All criminal charges against Palestinian American community leader and professor, Dr. Sami Al-Arian, were dropped on Friday, June 27th. The United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN) congratulates Dr. Al-Arian, his family, and his legal defense team for this huge victory. Dr. Al-Arian was facing criminal contempt charges for refusing to testify in front of a grand jury unrelated to a case in which he accepted a plea bargain from the U.S. government. The government’s move to dismiss the charges is a response to trial Judge Leonie Brinkema having not yet ruled on a defense motion that was filed over five years ago. As Dr. Al-Arian and his family were living in limbo awaiting Brinkema’s decision, another U.S. District Court Judge, Anthony Trenga, signed the order to accept the government’s motion, which ends close to two decades of repression against the doctor. The witch hunt began in 1994, when federal agents began surveilling, wiretapping, and investigating him. In 2003, federal prosecutors in Tampa filed an indictment which alleged that he was affiliated with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the many Palestinian resistance groups that the U.S. State Department calls a terrorist organization.

Obama Uses ISRAELI Supreme Court Decision To Justify Drone Killing

June 25, 2014 Rania Khalek, www.electronicintifada.net Educate! Barack Obama, Drones, Israel, Law, Terrorism

Almost three years have passed since the United States government extrajudicially murdered American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with a drone strike in Yemen. Al-Awlaki, although described by the government as a “terrorist” mastermind, had never been charged with any crime. The Obama adminstration refused to disclose the legal reasoning behind the killing. But thanks to Freedom Information Act lawsuits by The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a redacted version of the Department of Justice memo which outlines the Obama administration’s rationale for killing American citizens abroad without trial is now public. Authored by David Barron — former chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who has since been appointed by Obama to a federal judgeship — the 41-page document seeks to legitimize so-called targeted killings, a practice Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, vigorously condemned Israel for using against Palestinians during the second intifada.

Egyptian Injustice: Journalists Sentenced To 7 Years

June 23, 2014 AP, www.AP.org Resist! Egypt, Human Rights, Journalism, Prison, Terrorism

An Egyptian court convicted three Al-Jazeera journalists and sentenced them to seven years in prison each on terrorism-related charges in a verdict Monday that stunned their families and was quickly denounced as a blow to freedom of expression. International pressure mounted on Egypt's president to pardon the three. The verdicts against Australian Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian Mohamed Fahmy and Egyptian Baher Mohammed came after a 5-month trial that Amnesty International described as a "sham," calling Monday's rulings "a dark day for media freedom in Egypt." The three, who have been detained since December, contend they are being prosecuted simply for doing their jobs as journalists, covering Islamist protests against the ouster last year of President Mohammed Morsi. Three other foreign journalists, two Britons and a Dutch citizen, were sentenced to 10 years in absentia. Media groups have called the trial political, part of a fight between the government and the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network , which authorities accuse of bias toward the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi. The network denies any bias.

Chris Hedges And Noam Chomsky (3/3)

June 21, 2014 The Real News, www.therealnews.com Educate! Climate Change, Occupy, Surveillance, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

NOAM CHOMSKY, LINGUIST AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's just exactly as Orwell said: it's instilled into you. It's part of a deep indoctrination system which leads to a certain way of looking at the world and looking at authority, which says, yes, we have to be subordinate to authority, we have to believe we're very independent and free and proud of it. As long as we keep within the limits, we are. Try to go beyond those limits, you're out. CHRIS HEDGES, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST: Well, what was fascinating about--I mean, the point, just to buttress this point: when you took the major issues of the Occupy movement, they were a majoritarian movement. When you look back on the Occupy movement, what do you think its failings were, its importance were?

Recent Crimes Of The FBI

June 21, 2014 Derrick Broze, www.occupy.com Educate! FBI, Surveillance, Terrorism

On June 3, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department will revive a task force on domestic terrorism to curb that form of violence in the United States. Holder stated that the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee will work to eliminate danger from violent individuals who may be motivated by anti-government or racist views. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Division of the Justice Department, and the Attorney General’s Advisory Committee will lead the efforts. The committee was originally launched to focus on “right-wing extremism” in the aftermath of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Now, the latest move in the U.S. government’s War on Terror comes as shootings in Las Vegas and New Brunswick, Canada, have reignited the debate around perceived domestic terror threats. While Holder believes “it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home,” a careful examination of the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee – and specifically the FBI's role in the effort – reveals that the greatest threat to the freedom and safety of individuals in the United States may be the federal government itself.

We Cannot Have Political Surveillance And Democracy, Too

June 17, 2014 Privacy SOS, www.privacysos.org Educate! Democracy, Police, Privacy, Surveillance, Terrorism

From the UK to the United States, law enforcement at all levels is conflating dissent with terrorism, threatening the possibility for open societies and democratic change. In both countries, the war on terror—cast as an endless and border-less battle over ideology and religion—provides dangerous new latitude for governments to criminalize and monitor speech. But political surveillance today remains what it has always been: a way for governments to uphold the status quo in the face of demands for change. Perhaps then it shouldn't come as a surprise to find that politicians who ally with activists are prime targets of state security spying, in both London and Boston. New reports out of England confirm that London’s Metropolitan Police has been keeping track of politicians in a “extremists” database. Vice reports: Through the use of data protection laws, Jenny Jones, a London Green Party peer, and Ian Driver, a local councillor for the party, obtained files on themselves held in the database, which is supposedly used to monitor activists who use criminal means to push their ideas.

Post 9/11 Strategy: Invent Terrorists In The US

June 13, 2014 Stephen Downs and Kathy Manley, www.projectsalam.org Educate! 9/11, Criminal Justice and Prisons, Police abuse, Terrorism

This study focuses on post-9/11 claims by the U.S. government that it keeps the county safe from terrorism by arresting hundreds of so-called “terrorists” who were about to strike the U.S. until the FBI foiled their plots. In fact, this study shows that there have been remarkably few actual terrorism threats to this country in the last decade. The study shows that the war on terror has been largely a charade designed to make the American public believe that a terrorist army is loose in the U.S., when the truth is that most of the people convicted of terrorismrelated crimes posed no danger to the U.S. and were entrapped by a preventive strategy known as preemptive prosecution. The theme of the study links preemptive prosecution to the metaphor of “lawfare,” the use of the law as a weapon of war, in this case the war on terror.

Activists Oppose Separate Justice For Muslims

June 4, 2014 Aviva Stahl, www.thenation.com Resist! Civil Rights, Criminal Justice and Prisons, LGBTQ, Muslim, Terrorism

On a miserable Monday evening in early April, when most people were scuttling for the nearest subway, a motley group was huddled before an unremarkable grey building in lower Manhattan, declaiming into the rain. “[In 2006] we fought for Shifa’s safety, we fought for the Sadequee family’s safety, we fought for all of our safety,” said a woman standing in front of the crowd. “[Today] we must still come together across religious and spiritual traditions, across race and nations, across sexuality, across our beliefs, for our collective safety and livelihood.” The woman was Cara Page, executive director of the Audre Lorde Project and a prominent black queer activist; “Shifa” was Ehsanul “Shifa” Sadequee, a young man convicted of terrorism-related charges five years ago. The two had little obvious in common, but Page had been in Atlanta at the time of his trial and a member of the Free Shifa campaign, a coalition of supporters who argued that his prosecution and detention were unjust. It was proof, they said, that the inhumane detention of “War on Terror” suspects has occurred on American soil, too. Years later, most of the world had moved on from Sadequee’s story, but Page, like the others bundled around her, had not.

Covert US Military Training Goes To Africa

June 3, 2014 William R. Polk, www.truth-out.org Educate! Africa, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism

New US plans for training security forces in four African countries recall similar programs around the world, which often ended in the hand-picked trainees slaughtering civilians or staging military coups. With everyone’s attention focused on the European elections or President Barack Obama’s speech at West Point or the Ukraine, a story by Eric Schmitt in The New York Times on Tuesday may not have caught your attention. I believe, however, that it provides an insight into some of the major problems of American foreign policy. What Mr. Schmitt reports is that the U.S. has set up covert programs to train and equip native teams patterned on their instructors, the U.S. Army Delta Force, in several African countries. The program was advocated by Michael A. Sheehan who formerly was in charge of special operations planning in the Department of Defense and is now, according to Mr. Schmitt, holder of the “distinguished chair at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.”

Pentagon Bracing For Public Dissent Over Climate And Energy Shocks

May 29, 2014 Nafeez Ahmed, www.theguardian.com Resist! Activism, Climate Change, Pentagon, PRISM, Surveillance, Terrorism

Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA's Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis - or all three. Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted the Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic "emergency" or "civil disturbance": "Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances." Other documents show that the "extraordinary emergencies" the Pentagon is worried about include a range of environmental and related disasters.

Did Government And Corporations Plan Sniper Fire On Houston Occupy?

May 6, 2014 David Lindorff, www.thiscantbehappening.net Resist! Occupy, police brutality, Terrorism

Listen to Dave Lindorff explain on Santa Barbara radio KCSB's Radio Occupy program how the federal government, in collusion with state and local police, and possibly with private bank and oil company security firms, planned to use "suppressed sniper fire" to assassinate the leaders of Occupy Houston, and perhaps also the leaders of other Occupy Movement actions around the country. Drawing on classified FBI and Homeland Security documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice through the Freedom of Information Act, Lindorff tells Radio Occupy host Kathy Swift how the Homeland Security Department under the Obama administration coordinated the national crackdown that crushed the Occupy Movement, and how it nearly led to a campaign of assassination against this peaceful movement that in 2011 swept the nation. He also notes that the FBI, so quick to boast about the 40-plus alleged "terror" plots it has disrupted since 9-11, has never made a prosecution or arrest in this Houston terror plot to kill Occupy leaders, about which its Houston office wrote in a memo to FBI national headquarters. To listen to part I of this interview, got to Radio Occupy. (Part II will be available next week on this site.)

Full Show: Disband The NSA

April 24, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Kevin Zeese, NSA, Terrorism, Torture

The Pulitzer Prize for public service, among the most prestigious awards in journalism, was awarded to The Washington Post and Guardian U.S. for their articles based on National Security Agency documents leaked by the former government contractor Edward Snowden. Snowden released astatement, which read in part: (The Pulitzer decision) “is a vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government. We owe it to the efforts of the brave reporters and their colleagues who kept working in the face of extraordinary intimidation, including the forced destruction of journalistic materials, the inappropriate use of terrorism laws, and so many other means of pressure to get them to stop what the world now recognizes was work of vital public importance.” In stark contrast to the work of vital public important is the overwhelming majority of content produced by the main stream media; one that demonizes anyone who questions the right and might of the American Empire to do whatever it deems necessary to expand its imperial reach by any means necessary.

White-Washing White Terrorism

April 21, 2014 Ajamu Baraka, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Terrorism

Overland Park, a city of fewer than 200,000 in the heartland of the U.S. just south of Kansas City, is an unlikely setting for a terrorist attack. But on April 13, Frazier Glenn Cross, aka Frazier Glenn Miller, brought terror to Overland Park. With the intention to “kill him some Jews,” Miller, former Grand Dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and FBI informant showed up with weapons in hand at a Jewish community center and a retirement home and murdered three Christians whom he mistook as Jewish. While the authorities needed “more investigation” regarding Miller’s motive, the national media made the obvious connection characterizing the attack as a hate crime. But neither the media nor the authorities dared to call it what it was – a terrorist attack. For Miller, there was no ambiguity. Shouting “Heil Hitler” from the back of a police car, his intentions, and motivations were made clear. His was a political act with a political meaning that at its core was meant to not just intimidate, but terrorize a whole community. Strangely, however, when it comes to acts carried out by the racist, radical right, the media and state authorities seem loath to characterize them as acts of terror.

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